


Warm Velvet

by breathechoes (bluedreaming)



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Bae Joohyun | Irene/Park Sooyoung | Joy - Freeform, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-22 04:39:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7420234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/pseuds/breathechoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yeri thinks she knows what she wants to be when she grows up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warm Velvet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



> This story is a loose interpretation of the [Automatic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px2Q47O0_eE) video. I decided to use their stage names to remove the localization of the setting.

  
  
  
Yeri knows exactly what she wants from life. All the girls do. A nice house, a rich husband, maybe some children eventually that she can pass off to a nanny, she hasn't really thought about that much. But she definitely wants a white dress, with French lace, to get married in. She draws it sometimes, the tiny pencil lines overlapping, the questions she's never thought to ask stitching themselves into the web of lace surrounding the paper Yeri's neck, wrists, waist. The face won't come into view though, no matter how much she tries to get the shape right.  
  
"You draw such lovely pictures," her mother says, smiling. "Can you draw me a landscape? Maybe the orchard outside." Yeri doesn't really like drawing the orchard, she's drawn it over and over again, apple blossoms thickly covering branches with new promise, the lush greenery of summer growth, autumn with its heavy bounty of redly swollen fruit, winter, everything fallen and stripped away.  
  
"Don't frown, child, you'll wrinkle prematurely," her mother always says, tracing a delicate forefinger over Yeri's brow, and Yeri will look up and smile, and draw another orchard, branches shackled by blossoms and leaves, fruit and ice.  
  
Sometimes she doesn't understand herself at all, but then she thinks about her perfect future and she can forget everything else. Maybe there'll be a war too, so that her husband will be away and she won't have to see him. Yeri stops the selfish thought in its tracks, but it always comes back. She knows that her mother misses her father.  
  
Right?  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It's somehow not a surprise though, when her governess tells her in hushed tones one morning at breakfast that she's being sent away. The planes buzz overhead sometimes, and her mother turns white and Yeri is always sent away.  
  
"You'll like your aunts," her mother says, when Yeri goes to her in the afternoon to say goodbye. The roses are twining around the trellis where her mother sits, dapples of light blinking over her soft brown hair. Her mouth is pale, like the dusky pink roses that grow over the arch of the gazebo, and Yeri doesn't want to kiss her goodbye but she does anyway.  
  
"I love you mother," she says, and waves goodbye at the door. Her mother has a handkerchief knotted between her fingers, crumpled white and a single letter embroidered—her father's initial.  
  
Yeri's handkerchiefs have her own initial on them, as she sits in the corner and watches the maid carefully fold together the last of the contents of her trunk.  
  
"What do your handkerchiefs have embroidered on them?" she asks, without thinking, and the maid looks startled for a moment before smiling back.  
  
"I have flowers," she replies, smiling out the window at the rose garden just in sight over the sill, before going back to carefully tucking Yeri's petticoats over the top and closing the trunk with a satisfying click.  
  
Yeri finds, surprisingly, that she's glad to be going.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Yeri has four aunts. She only knows them from letters, twisting writing like ivy, green ink on creamy paper with birthday greetings, holiday wishes, and thank you notes for funeral condolences. Aunt Irene, Aunt Wendy and Aunt Joy are all widows, only Aunt Seulgi's husband is still living. Yeri has never met them before, and she's not sure what she's supposed to say.  
  
"I'm sorry for your loss?" It comes out like an awkward question, when she shapes the words with her mouth, watching her reflection in the train window as the countryside speeds by, because her aunts live almost at the sea.  
  
The house is tall, a faded red brick but still proud, white-curtained windows and thick green ivy that looks black in the dark. It's night, the sound of the ocean far away like a distant echo, as Yeri steps out of the car and walks slowly up to the window to peer inside. There's just an empty parlour. _Can I ever belong here?_  
  
Just then there's a click and a soft swish. "Yeri?" The front door cracks open and a silhouette of a face peers out, backlit against the inside glow. "Come in."  
  
Yeri leaves her trunk, and the brick of raclette that her mother sent as a gift to her sisters-in-law, in the hands of the capable driver and walks into the light.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Dinner is. . .different. They sit around the table, Aunt Irene, Aunt Wendy, Aunt Joy and Aunt Seulgi, and Yeri can't help feeling like she's at an interview for which she never sat any lessons. But she takes a deep breath, concealed in the cuff of her blouse, and takes comfort in the fact that her mother let her wear her very best Sunday stockings.  
  
"What you do want to be when you grow up?" Aunt Wendy asks, passing the pasta. Yeri blinks.  
  
"I'll get married of course," she says, automatically, and helps herself to a small helping before passing the dish. She's not a glutton. Looking up, she can see that Aunt Wendy is frowning and she feels like she answered the question wrong. _But that's the right answer, right?_ All of a sudden she's not sure, and twirls too much spaghetti around her fork, so that a noodle trails out of her mouth when she pops the fork in her mouth. It's embarrassing.  
  
"Getting married isn't a career," Aunt Joy says, and takes a serving of salad. Yeri watches her eyes glance across the table, but she can't tell what she's looking at.  
  
"Do you have anything you like to do?" Aunt Seulgi asks instead. She smiles, a small smile, but Yeri feels more on solid ground with this question, though it's usually the one that makes her nervous at her mother's dinner parties.  
  
"I like drawing," she says, "but people, not landscapes." Yeri hadn't meant to say that, but as the words slip out of her mouth she realizes they're true.  
  
"People are a kind of landscape all unto themselves," Aunt Irene says, and looks at Aunt Wendy, who inclines her head to her salad.  
  
Yeri expects the waitstaff to clear the table after they eat, and two maids do come out with a cart, but Aunt Seulgi sends them away with a wave of her hand, glancing towards Aunt Irene, who nods. The maids leave quietly, slipping into the shadows.  
  
"Do you like to read?" she asks Yeri, leading her along as the Aunts leave Seulgi alone with the dishes.Yeri doesn't really, but she feels like saying yes will make Aunt Irene happy so she nods anyway.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Yeri discovers that she likes reading. Curled up on the windowseat, reading in the soft daylight diffused through the green ivy, or nestled on the carpet in front of the study fire at night, Charles Dickens in hand, or Oscar Wilde. _Why doesn't mother have these kinds of books?_ The words roll around like chocolate on her tongue, or the wine that Aunt Seulgi lets her drink with dinner.  
  
"You're 16," she said, when Yeri looked up at her, hesitating to take the proffered wine glass. "That's old enough to know what you want."  
  
Yeri likes reading, or maybe she just likes watching Aunt Irene. All of the Aunts really. They don't talk much, but their glances seem to weigh more than words. Aunt Irene glances at Aunt Wendy, and they disappear for a while into another room, not coming out before Yeri goes to bed. Aunt Seulgi watches the door, while she sits at the table in the the den, writing tiny coiled up words on lined paper in notebooks that she keeps locked in the the desk drawer. Yeri knows, because she tried opening it when no one was in the room.  
  
"What does Aunt Seulgi write?" she asks Aunt Irene one time, more for an excuse to talk to her than anything else. Yeri can't understand Aunt Irene, the whole house seems to revolve around her and yet she never tells anyone what to do, and barely the servants either.  
  
"She writes her sadness out," Aunt Irene says, and Yeri doesn't understand.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Sometimes the aunts play tennis in the court outside, when it's not too hot, or sometimes despite the heat.  
  
"Do you miss your husband?" Yeri dares to ask Aunt Joy one time, as she stands in the shady green of the oak trees, white tennis skirt, long legs, tossing a fuzzy green ball from hand to hand. Her aunt just looks at her, and raises an eyebrow, a long perfect line that Yeri sometimes thinks would be nice to trace with a fingertip.  
  
"Men," she sniffs, "who needs them?" Her serve, a sharp crack as the ball connects with the racket, doesn't sound angry but instead joyous, as Aunt Wendy makes a face in protest at the unexpected commencement of a new round.  
  
There's a letter waiting on the dining room table when they come in for dinner, a telegram, white paper and black print. It's for Aunt Seulgi, and everyone is quiet while she reads it, and then excuses herself to the bathroom. Yeri is confused, but she doesn't seem to be able to ask.  
  
Aunt Joy passes her the potato salad, and she puts too much on her plate, regretting it when the creamy taste turns grainy on her over-coated tongue. There are footsteps from the hallway, and Aunt Seulgi pushes open the door, resuming her seat at the table.  
  
Her pink lipstick is now red, and she looks at Aunt Irene who looks over at Aunt Wendy, who looks at Yeri.  
  
"We're sorry for your loss," she says, and Yeri almost laughs when she realizes that Aunt Seulgi's husband has just been reported killed in action. She bites her tongue instead. She doesn't know her uncle at all, and the way the aunts just keep eating makes so much sense and yet doesn't make any sense at all. She remembers what Aunt Joy said by the tennis court.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
She's still thinking about it, tossing and turning in her sheets, sweat-sticky from the heat of summer despite the open window and the faint breeze blowing in. Finally she sits up. Maybe a book will help.  
  
Tiptoeing down the stairs, the soft wood grain of the floor whispering under her feet, Yeri notices a light on in the library; there's the faint flickering from the fire through the doorway but also the soft glow of a lamp. _Someone's awake?_ Half afraid that it might be Aunt Seulgi, Yeri slips between the bookshelves and peers through a gap where _Great Expectations_ should be.  
  
At first she doesn't understand, because all her aunts are widows now. But Aunt Irene's hair is gold in the firelight and Aunt Joy's long tresses are a fiery red in the glow of the lamp; Yeri feels like her chest is on fire, watching their lips meet, red and red and soft skin, fingertips dipping beneath the fabric of Aunt Irene's lace blouse, Aunt Joy's leg pressed between Aunt Irene's as they lean against the mahogany desk.  
  
Yeri holds her breath.  
  
Stepping back softly in the dark, her fingers feeling for the doorframe before she twirls in the shadows and slips quietly back up the stairs in the thick summer stillness, Yeri can't get the picture out of her head.  
  
She wonders what it would be like to kiss Aunt Irene, and she realizes she wants to find out.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It's not to be.  
  
There's another letter waiting, this time at the breakfast table when Yeri comes down, blinking her eyes, puffed with sleeplessness and dreams she doesn't know how to begin to ask for.  
  
There's a letter, but everyone is already dead.  
  
"Your mother wants you to come back home," Aunt Irene says, and Yeri can't help the faint blush that dusts her cheeks when she meets her gaze. Hopefully her aunt doesn't notice, she's looking at Aunt Joy anyway.  
  
"Is everyone alright?" Yeri remembers to answer, a heartbeat too late to be quite polite.  
  
"You have a baby brother," Aunt Seulgi says, and her smile is just a little bit wistful around the corners. _Oh,_ Yeri thinks. _Oh._  
  
"Will I be able to come back?" she asks, instead of asking about the surprise brother she wasn't expecting. The question is suddenly, urgently, pressing.  
  
"Of course," Aunt Joy replies, and grins. Yeri grins back.  
  
It's getting dark when the car comes to pick her up to drive to the train, and the aunts have already said goodbye in the den. Yeri stands at the window and looks in at the parlour one last time. The glow follows her ankles as she turns and steps away.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
In the train, she pulls out her sketchbook for the first time in a while, since leaving home probably. It's taken a while for the orchards to fade from her head, but when she sets her pencil to paper, the white dress bound in layered lace doesn't flow out. It's difficult, on a moving train, but she gets used to the rhythm and soon the lines are trailing out, a nice dress, rose-printed poplin and her arms are bare, one hand raised to hold an apple to her mouth. It's only when Yeri raises her pencil from the page that she realizes it's the first time she's drawn her face.  
  
It's nice.  
  
She can still taste the phantom apple as she flips the sketch book shut and tucks it carefully away in her bag.  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the [Unnideul exchange (2015)](http://unnideul.livejournal.com/23169.html).


End file.
